Earth Day turns 40

April 18, 2010

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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A mallard soars to freedom at the Wetland and Wildlife Care Center's opening day celebration as Director Debbie McGuire releases the bird, one of three nursed back to health after getting caught in a small oil spill in Huntington Beach two weeks ago. They were washed, rinsed and re-waterproofed. MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Sharon Weeks with the Wetland and Wildlife Care Center holds a 5-week-old racoon, one of four found at a Costa Mesa boatyard. The animals are nursed four-times a day and should be ready to be released back to nature at 6-8 months of age. MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Visitors to the Wetland and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach, watch birds and racoons behind privacy glass. The glass protects the creatures from getting use to seeing humans thus making them more tame. MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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The newly restored Magnolia Marsh in Huntington Beach features a new observation deck, left, and boat dock. MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Four hummingbirds are released back to nature after being nursed back to health at the Wetland and Wildlife Care Center, 21900 PCH. MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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An orphaned hummingbird gets fed special formula imported from Germany, at the Wetland and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach. MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Lisa Birkle, left, and Sharon Weeks, prepare to feed four infant raccoons at the Wetland and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach Saturday. MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Visitors to the newly restored Magnolia Marsh in Huntington Beach check out the views during Saturday's opening day celebration. MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

A mallard soars to freedom at the Wetland and Wildlife Care Center's opening day celebration as Director Debbie McGuire releases the bird, one of three nursed back to health after getting caught in a small oil spill in Huntington Beach two weeks ago. They were washed, rinsed and re-waterproofed. MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

The yearly celebration born in the baby boomers' tumultuous youth is itself racking up a few candles: the 40th anniversary of Earth Day will be marked around the world on Thursday.

It's a firmly entrenched tradition in Orange County as well, with beach cleanups, nature tours, lectures and festivals, many of them meant to impart environmental messages to children.

But what was it like on the first Earth Day in Orange County?

Shirley Dettloff, a former Huntington Beach city councilwoman, was a young mother who had not yet begun what would turn into decades of environmental activism.

She remembers that something new was in the air in the Orange County of 1970.

"We were all just learning the word 'environmentalist,'" Dettloff said. "It was so new. I don't think anyone knew it would take on the scope that it took – that we would be having Earth Day celebrations every weekend in April, which we are."

Dettloff would go on, just a few years later, to become a founding member of Amigos de Bolsa Chica, a group dedicated to preserving the Bolsa Chica wetlands. Many years later, she saw her goal realized: the wetlands were purchased for preservation in 1997.

Retired Orange County park ranger Tom Maloney, then 15, remembers exactly what he was doing on Earth Day 1970: painting trash cans bright colors at Villa Park High School to battle a scourge of the time, littering.

Maloney's science teacher, Sophia Scheppe, got her students involved in several Earth Day projects around campus.

"We would take recycled paint and paint the trash cans more colorfully in order to draw attention to the trash cans, so the students wouldn't litter as much," he said. "It wasn't psychedelic. We didn't have fluourescent paint."

They also planted native flowers and built a pond for amphibians.

Biologist Elisabeth Brown thinks that was the year she attended an Earth Day celebration at the UCI.

She was a young graduate student at the time, and the celebration proved to be a turning point.

"That's the one where I met Jim Dilley," Brown said. "He had a table with a few others; he handed out materials about the green belt."

Dilley was, in fact, an early organizer of the group, Laguna Greenbelt. Brown is now its president.

And it's all because she happened to stop by Dilley's table.

"Little turnings end up being important," she said. "And you never know when you're making one of those little turnings."

Hank Wedaa, also an activist and political figure who lives in Yorba Linda, wasn't in Orange County, but remembers the day clearly. He'd taken a trip to New York, and attended the Earth Day festivities there.

Wedaa served for years on the South Coast Air Quality Management District board, some of the time as its chairman, and is a former Yorba Linda city councilman and mayor. He's also belonged to a variety of organizations pushing alternative fuels, such as hydrogen power, to reduce air pollution.

He moved to Yorba Linda in 1965 and, in 1970, took a break from his job – preparing environmental documents related to the Ontario Airport – for the trip to New York, where he found himself in the midst of the first Earth Day celebration.

"They had all these organizations interested in the environment spread up and down the street, mile after mile, like a big county fair," Wedaa said. "You could find whatever you wanted in that collection of people. People would support anything or detract from anything in those days in the environmental movement. It was very disparate, very uncoordinated, unfocused; as time went on, a lot of these very different organizations fell apart."

Today, he said, environmental groups are more tightly focused – and more effective.

"I think the environmental movement has a lot more credibility than it did in those days," he said.

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